lede
/liːd/US/lid/
lede noun: a man; a person. Also the obsolete spelling of lead.
Noun (1)
lede (plural lede)
- A man; a person.
- & after to callice hee [Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey] arriued, / like a noble Leed of high degree, / & then to Turwin soone he hyed, / there he thought to haue found King Henery; […]p. 1544, “fflodden ffeilde”, in John W[esley] Hales, Frederick J[ames] Furnivall, [Francis James] Child, W[illiam] Chappell, et al., editors, Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript. Ballads and Romances...
- Sweet, yes sweet is over (beyond) measure / The marrying for the young lede (people); / Most sweet it is, I say yet (once more), / When it goes with the rede (counsel) of the elders.1836, J[oseph] Bosworth, “Friesic”, in The Origin of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages, and Nations: […], London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, →OCLC, page 72
Noun (2)
lede (plural ledes)
- The introductory paragraph or paragraphs of a newspaper, or a news or other type of article; the lead or lead-in.
- Readers usually see the lead picture and read its caption first, before reading the lede of the article, so the article lede should not be a repetition of the caption.1979, J. W. Click, Russell N. Baird, Magazine Editing and Production, 2nd edition, Dubuque, Iowa: W[illiam] C. Brown, →ISBN, page 90
- "How can Mr. On-line Guy learn to be a journalist if he didn't go through what I went through?" they [newspaper journalists] ask. "I needed the city editor to tell me how to write a graceful sentence, and I was a year into the job before I could craft a decent lede?"1999, Mike Godwin, “Who’s a Journalist?—II: Welcome the New Journalists on the Internet”, in Robert H. Giles, Robert W. Snyder, editors, What’s Next?: Problems & Prospects of Journalism, New...
- Synonyms:
- intro
Adjective capitalized: LEDE
LEDE (not comparable)
- Initialism of live end dead end.
Also used as
lede is also the obsolete spelling of lead.
lede meaning in Indonesian
lede in Indonesian
- introductory paragraph or paragraphs of a newspaper or other news article
- teras berita
Examples of lede in a sentence
- Gramércy, liegé King, / This is to me a comforting: / I tell you sickerly / For to have land or lede / Or other riches, so God me speed, / It is too much for me.c. 1870s, “Transition English: From the Conquest to Chaucer.—a.d. 1066 to a.d. 1352 [Sir Cleges.]”, in Henry Morley, editor, Shorter...
- I was thrilled to be in possession of this nugget, which could probably take over the lede of my story.2007 February, Brian McGrory, chapter 40, in Strangled, New York, N.Y.: Atria Books, →ISBN, page 314:
- Like all forms of writing, there's no hard and fast rule about what makes a great lede.2018, Branden Salas, “Reporting for Print Media”, in Basic Concept of Journalism, Waltham Abbey, Essex: Ed-Tech Press, published 2020...
- Service and celebrity pieces often begin with first-person ledes.2019, Naveed Saleh, “Narrative: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends”, in The Writer’s Guide to Self-editing: Essential Tips for Online and Print...
Synonyms of lede
Forms of lede
| plural | lede |
|---|---|
| alternative form | leed |
| alternative form | leod |
| plural | ledes |
Origin of lede
From Middle English lede, leode (“man; human being, person; lord, prince; God; sir; group, kind; race; a people, nation; human race; land, real property”) [and other forms], from three closely related words: * Old English lēod (“man; chief, leader; (poetic) prince; a people, people group; nation”); * Old English lēoda (“man; person; native of a country”), related to lēod; and * Old English lēode (“men; people; the people of a country”), originally the plural of lēod. Lēod is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *liudi, from Proto-Germanic *liudiz (“man; person; men; people”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁léwdʰis (“man, people”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁lewdʰ- (“to grow; people”). Doublet of leud. Cognates The English word is cognate with Dutch lieden (“people”), lui(den) (“people”), German Leute (“people”), Norwegian lyd (“people”), Polish lud (“people”), Russian люди (ljudi, “people”), West Frisian lie (“people”).
A deliberate misspelling of lead, originally used in instructions given to printers to indicate which paragraphs constitute the lede, intended to avoid confusion with the word lead which may actually appear in the text of an article. Compare dek (“subhead”) (modified from deck) and hed (“headline”) (from head).
See lead.
Words formed from lede
Phrases with lede
Words that rhyme with lede
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- weed
- proceed
- stampede
- concede
- accede
- deed
- exceed
- need
- bede
- knead
- mislead
- plead
- rede
- swede
- cede
- creed
- godspeed
- heed
- intercede
- keyed
- leed
- meed
- precede
- recede
- tumbleweed
- a friend in need is a friend indeed
- beread
- greed
- he'd
- indeed
- interbreed
- kneed
- mead
- secede
- she'd
- sneed
- steed
- supersede
- underfeed
- we'd
- ye'd
- agreed
- anasheed
- aniseed
- atheed
- caid
- co-feed
- cofeed
Questions about lede
- What does lede mean?
- Lede means a man; a person.
- What is lede in Indonesian?
- Lede in Indonesian is teras berita. See Lede meaning in Indonesian.
- How do you use lede in a sentence?
- Gramércy, liegé King, / This is to me a comforting: / I tell you sickerly / For to have land or lede / Or other riches, so God me speed, / It is too much for me.
- What part of speech is lede?
- Lede can be a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce lede?
- Lede is pronounced /liːd/ (UK).
- What is the plural of lede?
- The plural of lede is lede.
Words near lede in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: lede (page history and authors); LEDE (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-lede.wav.
Cite this entry: “lede.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lede. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.